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Full resolution (TIFF) - On this page / på denna sida - IV. Economics - 14. The Negro in Business, the Professions, Public Service and Other White Collar Occupations - 10. Note on Shady Occupations
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Chapter 14. The Negro in Business 331
other Negro businesses, partly as a ^^front” to give respectability to their
gambling enterprise and partly as normal and sound investments for their
profits.
While the members of the shady upper class are not accepted by the
respectable Negro upper and middle classes, the observer finds that they
have a great deal of status in the eyes of lower class Negroes and are not
greatly condemned by agencies for Negro concerted action or by the Negro
press. There are several reasons for this. Most important is the fact that the
policy “kings” are wealthy, and that they are generous in a poor com-
munity.®® Also significant is the fact that when the organized white gangs
became interested in the numbers racket, many of the original Negro
entrepreneurs, having grown wealthy and not liking violent criminal
activities, retired j
they thus acquired a sort of second-hand and late respect-
ability. Negroes have not usually been organized into gangs involved in
all kinds of criminal activities as have the white gangs j
they tend to be
individual entrepreneurs usually in the gambling rackets and in machine
politics—^businesses which are illegal but tacitly accepted by public opinion.
The power of these big racket kings is derived not only from their
wealth and their political tie-ups, but from the fact that they provide a large
number of jobs in a poor and unemployed community. The numbers racket
requires a great number of middlemen who are small fry from the point
of view of those at the top but who are not only rich in relation to most
members of the community but also lead a free and easy, rather romantic
and exciting life.®^ The young Negro fresh from the rural South is even
more impressed than is the Northern Negro youth, but even the Northern
youth is restricted by caste from the satisfying and economically advanta-
geous jobs and must admire a person who has plenty of money, adventure
and status.
The high popularity and prestige of large-scale gamblers and racketeers
is a general American pattern and not restricted to the Negro community.
This American pattern is exaggerated not only in the Negro ghettos but
in all isolated and economically disadvantaged metropolitan groups. Funda-
mental to its explanation is the odd American tradition of keeping a large
number of human activities illegal—for instance, the sale of liquor during
prohibition and now gambling—^in spite of the fact that they are commonly
indulged in by the citizens without serious restrictions by law-enforcement
agencies.® The American tradition of entangling normal and permitted
activities by a great number of impractical, expensive or unenforceable
proscriptions has similar effects.
There are several reasons why it is to be expected that the Negro com-
munity should be extreme in sheltering a big underworld. One reason is the
very great restriction of economic and social opportunities for young
* See Chapter x, Sections 8, 9 and 10.
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